Harry Bridges’s Australia, Australia’s Harry Bridges Robert Cherny Professor emeritus of History, San Francisco State University Harry Bridges was born in Australia in 1901. He came to the United States in 1920, led the longshore workers of the Pacific Coast from 1934 until 1977, and died in San Francisco in 1990. In this paper, I’ll look first at the ways that Bridges drew upon his early life in Australia at crucial points in his career, and then at the way the Australian press and government viewed Bridges once he rose to prominence in the US. Harry Bridges’s Australia In December 1919, at the age of eighteen, Bridges left Australia and did not return until 1967. His early years in Australia nonetheless left an indelible mark on him. The lessons he learned in his parents' household pointed him along quite different paths. One path was marked out by his devoutly Catholic mother, but a different one by his unchurched father. His father's fervent Anglophilism clashed with his mother's Irish nationalism. And the business priorities of his father conflicted with his uncles' commitment to the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Bridges was born in 1901 in Kensington, a suburb of Melbourne, and was baptized at St. Brendan’s, the local Catholic church, as Alfred Renton Bridges.1 His mother, Julia Dorgan Bridges, sometimes worked as a shopkeeper. Her parents were Irish, and she and her sisters, Ellen and Beatrice, were devout Catholics. Julia and Ellen considered themselves friends of Daniel Mannix, dating to when he served as 1 Baptism Register St. Brendan's Church, Kensington. Cherny, “Harry Bridges and Australia, p. 2 parish priest near Ellen’s boarding house. As archbishop of Melbourne, Mannix became an outspoken defender of Australia’s Irish and Catholics and sometimes took controversial public positions. Bridges always remembered Mannix as "a great hero to my family."2 Most of Bridges’s education came in Catholic schools. Julia also gave her son lessons in Irish nationalism.3 Alfred Bridges, the father, was of English descent, unchurched but devoted to the British empire. He bought and sold real estate and invested in rental housing in the Melbourne suburbs east of the Maribyrnong River. Young Alfred worked for his father on Saturdays, collecting rent and delivering eviction notices. He disliked that work, especially when he had to deal with the families of children he knew.4 His father’s brothers were important in young Alfred’s family life, especially Henry Renton Bridges, who had married his mother’s sister, Beatrice. They and their children lived on a small farm near Yea, north of Melbourne. Known to his neighbors as Harry, he worked as a woolpresser during sheep-shearing season and belonged to the Australian Workers' Union (AWU), which represented agricultural workers.5 Then the largest and wealthiest union in Australia, the AWU provided the major support for the 2 Cherny interview with Harry Bridges, 12/19/1985; interviews of Bridges by Charles Einstein, tapes 18, 21 (hereinafter Einstein tapes); letter, Harry Bridges to C. H. Fitzgibbon, December 18, 1963, item 98, Waterside Workers Federation of Australia collection, N114, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University (hereinafter Butlin Archives). For Mannix, see, e.g., Colm Kiernan, Daniel Mannix and Ireland (Morwell, VIC: Alella Books, 1984); B. A. Santamaria, Daniel Mannix: The Quality of Leadership (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1984); and James G. Murtagh, Australia: The Catholic Chapter (Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd., 1959). 3 Einstein tape 18; interviews of Bridges by Noriko Sawada Bridges, tapes 1, HB (hereinafter NSB tapes); Cherny interview, 12/19/1985. 4 NSB tape HB; Einstein tape 49. 5 Einstein tape 4; Bridges, Henry Renton Nicholson, file, Personnel Dossiers for 1st Australian Imperial Forces ex-service members, series B2455, World War I Personnel Records Service, Australian Archives, Mitchell, ACT (hereinafter AA). Cherny, “Harry Bridges and Australia, p. 3 Australian Labor Party (ALP) in rural areas.6 The Yea Chronicle described "Harry Bridges" as "the local organizer for the Labor Party," and noted that "whilst holding that position he took a most prominent part in electioneering matters. He was a fearless speaker at all times, and a fair fighter."7 Charles, the third brother, also an ALP activist, later held elective office in Sydney.8 Alfred, too, initially supported the ALP.9 The ALP, organized about the time young Alfred was born, advocated nationalization of monopolies, social welfare measures such as old age pensions, Australian nationalism (rather than emphasizing identity with Britain), and such trade- union issues as industrial arbitration courts. During the first decade of the party’s history, laborites and socialists contested for control within the ALP. The Victorian Branch of the ALP initially favored the socialists but later moved toward the laborites.10 In 1910, the ALP became the first social-democratic party in the world to win a national electoral majority and majorities in both houses of parliament. They established a minimum wage, extended industrial arbitration, imposed a graduated tax on land, and created a commonwealth bank, which competed with privately owned 6 John Merritt, The Making of the AWU (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 341. 7 Yea Chronicle, Aug. 24, 1916. 8 Alec H. Chisholm, comp. and ed., Who's Who in Australia, 13th edn. (Melbourne: Herald and Weekly Times, 1947), p. 169. 9 Cherny interview, 12/19/1985. 10 For the ALP, see Frank Bongiorno, The People's Party: Victorian Labor and the Radical Tradition, 1875-1914 (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1996), chs. 1-2; Bede Nairn, Civilising Capitalism: The Beginnings of the Australian Labor Party, rev. edn. (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1989); Ian Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics: The Dynamics of the Labor Movement in Eastern Australia, 1900-1921 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1965), pp. 17-22; Robin Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1850-1910 (Parkville, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1960), pp. 69-72, 78, 80-81, 128-150; George Healey, A.L.P.: The Story of the Labor Party (Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1955), pp. 22-23. Cherny, “Harry Bridges and Australia, p. 4 banks. In 1911 and 1913, the ALP submitted referenda seeking extensive federal power over the economy, including power to nationalize monopolies, but voters defeated both measures.11 Young Alfred so admired his favorite uncle that he decided to call himself Harry Renton Bridges.12 He attended a secondary school run by the Christian Brothers from May 1912 until February 1915, but left without graduating.13 While working for a stationery firm, he frequented the Melbourne docks, talked with seamen, studied seafaring, and dreamed of going to sea.14 By then, the world was at war. Greeting the war with naive excitement and cheerful optimism, Australians immediately sent troops in support of Britain. Henry Renton Bridges, young Harry’s favorite uncle, enlisted in early 1915, saw action at Gallipoli, and died in France in mid-1916. A few months earlier, English troops had suppressed the Easter Rising in Ireland. Archbishop Mannix publicly deplored the actions of the British government, and, throughout Victoria, Irish nationalism became increasingly coupled to criticism of the war.15 By late 1916, the need for additional troops became so great that William Hughes, prime minister since 1915, called for conscription. That issue split the ruling 11 Russel Ward, The History of Australia: The Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 75-82. 12 Einstein tapes 4, 46; NSB tapes 1, HB. 13 Register, Christian Brothers' School, St. Mary's, West Melbourne. 14 Cherny interview, 12/19/1985; NSB tape 1; Einstein tapes 5, 18, 49; Essendon Gazette, July 5, 1934, p. 1; and Wm. J. Mackay to W. J. Quinn, 8 Feb.1937, file c-6405274, box 6, Harry Bridges INS file, National Archives Pacific Region, San Bruno, California; [Melbourne] The Age, Sept. 27, 1967, p. 1. 15 Mannix's speech was reported in the Advocate on May 6, 1916, and reprinted in Robson, Australia and the Great War, 1918-1918, pp. 62-63; NSB tape HB; Ward, History of Australia, pp. 102, 118. Cherny, “Harry Bridges and Australia, p. 5 ALP, which voted no-confidence in Hughes. Hughes and his supporters left the ALP and formed the Nationalist Party. Harry’s father followed Hughes out of the ALP and, according to his nephew, became "a very strong Tory."16 During 1917, events in Melbourne began to shape Bridges’s political understanding. In mid-1917, Melbourne and Sydney dockworkers cited high food prices when they resolved not to load food supplies onto ships other than those bound for Britain and Allied ports. In mid-August, Melbourne dockworkers completely closed the port.17 Other unions joined the strike, including carters and drivers, seamen, iron- molders, and waitresses. Then railway workers struck over the introduction of new work rules. Other workers joined the stoppage, which came to be called the "Great Strike." In Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, the number of strikers swelled to 97,000. Prime Minister Hughes blamed enemy agents and the Industrial Workers of the World, and newspapers vied with government spokesmen in discerning the specter of the IWW's "general strike." The strikes largely collapsed by late September.18 Bridges remembered that his father's admiration for Prime Minister Hughes and Hughes's attacks on the strikers produced an anti-union atmosphere in the Bridges house.19 16 Ward, History of Australia, pp. 113-114, 116-117, 121-122; Laurence F. Fitzhardinge, William Morris Hughes: A Political Biography, 2 vols. (Sydney: Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1979), 2:213, 225-234; Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics, pp. 113-116; Thelma D.